All law firms should publish gender pay gap figures - Law Society

The Law Society is recommending that all law firms, including those with fewer than 250 employees, should publish their gender pay gap statistics in the current reporting period.

In guidance published today the Society says all members should ‘where practical to do so’ undertake the reporting exercise and publish data on their website alongside a ’narrative report’ and ‘action plan’. It adds that firms should consider gathering information on pay details for others within the workforce, including gaps related to disability, ethnicity and sexuality.

Chancery Lane said its recommendations are ‘best practice’ to ‘set the right standards’ for the legal sector. It will be up to individual firms to decide whether to implement the recommendations.

Under the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations, organisations with 250 or more employees were required to publish the average gap in earnings between men and women by 4 April 2018. The second reporting period has now started, in which firms will have to publish their data again by April 2019. The details are published on the government’s website.

Calls to review the regulations have already been made. Conservative MP and chair of the House of Commons’ women and equalities committee Maria Miller previously told the Gazette that many law firms will not fall within the scope of the regulations because of the 'employment status of some people who work in their firms’ and that they should be reviewed.

Some law firms sparked anger during the first reporting period by omitting partners from the data on the grounds that they are ‘not employees’. The negative reaction forced some to resubmit their data to include partners.

Firms including Allen & Overy and Macfarlanes have included partners in the latest reporting period having omitted them the first time around.

The Society, which already said it supports including partners in the data, has suggested firms provide at least three separate figures: one for all the workforce (employees and partners together); one for employees only; and one for partners only. ‘It is best practice to further break down each of these figures by job type (e.g. legal and non-legal/business support roles) and then by level to make them more transparent,’ it added.

According to the Society, the narrative report should take a ‘holistic view’ of policies and practices including recruitment, retention, staff progression and workplace wellbeing while the ‘action plan’ should explain how a firm will address the pay gaps identified.

Law Society president Christina Blacklaws said: ‘Law firms can get ahead of the curve by assessing and tackling the range of pay gaps that may exist in their organisation. Inequalities can be compounded by the intersection of protected characteristics like gender and ethnicity, so identifying these dynamics will help firms to create far more effective, sustainable equality action plans.’

To cross reference to my post on the article regarding lack of female partners in firms, for the reasons set out in my other post, we are a male partnership with about 90% female employees ranging from heads of department to office junior. Therefore a large range of salaries. But if you averaged the partners drawings against all female employees salaries, we would rate badly. But the figures would distort the reality that we have senior people of both genders at the firm, and on the basis of the percentage of female employees st the firm, we would be very much pro women. Like brexit, this is all too simplistic and therefore doesn’t help or advance the argument.

The Law Society is wrong. Firms should not comply with this witch-hunt any more than they are required to do by law.

GPG ideologues have lost the argument. These figures are meaningless. They tell us nothing. They do not constitute evidence of discrimination or unfair inequality. Those who believe the contrary have had plenty of opportunity to set out a persuasive case that withstands rational scrutiny. They have failed to do so.

Far too much telling us all what to do and self-indulgent virtue-signalling ; they need to look up the sensible reasons cited in Parliament in the Equality Act 2010 for excluding firms withe less than 250 staff ; stats on mini firms are meaningless and distorted by job-shares etc; no doubt SRA will afterwards morph the requirement into a gold plated publishing " transparently " on every website with all the ongoing work that's involved in permanently updating involving computer code! God , when will they just stop and let us get on properly with the job ?

I hereby publish mine. My firm is 100% female (I alone) and I keep all the money (and out earn most men elsewhere which is huge fun). So I wonder what I would publish. That there is no pay gap I suppose. Or women earn 100% of the fees. I would have accepted a partnerhip at either of my last two firms and it is their loss they didn't offer me one, in my view. Whether it were down to my being female who knows.

I'm having a crack at BS bingo here. So far, skim reading, I have spotted "holistic view", "action plan" and "ahead of the curve". I don't think I'll read the article in more detail because the sort of virtue signaling exercise described isn't really my cup of tea.

I disagree. Women should be paid less than men. They have emotional problems, are disruptive in their workplace environments, cry at work, bully other women colleagues, and spend ages away from the office having babies. Plus they are too risk averse.

This is my opinion and I'm entitled to it. If this were a free and open society, I wouldn't have to click the 'anonymous' tab.

Take a firm that has 8 'partners' 4 male and 4 female, all receive the same remuneration £60k.
The firm also has 8 associates. 4 male and 4 female, all receive the same remuneration but the four women all work part time .6 FTE an therefore receive pro-rata less the men earn £40k the women £24k
The firm employs 12 support staff who earn between £16 and £20k and all 12 are female.

The result a significant disparity but yet no differential between comparable roles.

The figures are meaningless without a detailed discussion as to why the pay gap exists. I would suggest The Gazette interviews Jordan Peterson if it is interested in a meaningful and nuanced discussion.

I an fed up of these articles hinting that the reason for the pay gap is widespread discrimination when there is no evidence to back up that conclusion. There are many mundane reasons that explain the pay gap.

Based loosely on a small office I worked at many years ago as an example, I have 10 staff of 5 men and 5 women. 8 (4 men & 4 women) do the same hours & role and get equal pay for it (say £40k), so there’s no gap. Then there’s Eve, the experience office manager, who gets £65k, and Adam, who is just out of school and does admin & post etc, who gets £20k. Now I have a 25% pay gap.

I know this required publishing from companies, businesses or organisations with over 250 staff, but it’s very easy for figures to appear discriminatory at such a high level overview, even if people doing the same role are paid the same salary.

I know there’s then the issue of why men have higher up roles and not women, but we need to recognise that men are more likely (not exclusively) going to apply for promotions and more responsibility. That is not to say women are less capable or able at doing the role and achieving the same results, but having been in the position of hiring managers via direct applications and receiving 8, all from men, I’m not sure what the expectations are? When it came to filling admin roles, over 80% of the applications were from women.

If companies don’t get the applicants, we can’t be solely responsible for GPG

Have we really got nothing better to be doing than gathering figures to show that yes, solicitors do in fact get paid more than secretaries?

And to what end will these details be published? How is this expected to benefit man, woman or beast (LGBTQ+ or otherwise)? When I learn that women in my firm out-earn men, what with women outnumbering men in senior positions, then what?

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